Temperature monitoring in the OR – State of the art and a 2012 update

SummaryAccurate measurement of patient core temperature is an integral part of thermoregulatory management – for the preservation of normothermia, prophylaxis, and treatment of accidental perioperative hypothermia, for therapeutic hypothermia, e.g., after cardiac arrest, and for therapeutic hyperthermia during oncological treatments. Many thermometers are available that accurately report the tissue temperature they measure. However, the less invasive the measurement location, the more likely the tissue does not reflect true patient core temperature, for which the gold standard may be considered pulmonary artery temperature and/or intracranial temperature. In this review I present a brief history of thermometry, discuss the problem of the core temperature gold standard and present a brief overview of existing, emerging, and experimental thermometry technologies.